- Ted, welcome back, it's good to see you.

It was a very big week at the Rhode Island State House.

Governor Dan McKee delivered his annual State of the State Address, and then he released his $14 billion budget bill.

It's arguably one of the most important weeks of the year for McKee.

- Oh, absolutely, Michelle.

This is, for any governor, the State of the State is the chance to, you know, you seize the initiative, right?

You're the center of attention, you can lay out your agenda, you can try to reframe challenges that you've had before.

And then as you say, the budget bill comes out right after, and that's, I would say it's sort of an opening bid in negotiations with lawmakers over how next year's tax and spending plan will come together.

- Governor McKee covered a lot of ground in his State of the State Address.

He talked about the shortage of primary care doctors in Rhode Island, and he said that one of the ways he plans to work on that is by offering loan forgiveness to providers who choose to stay and work in Rhode Island.

He also talked about increasing state aid to public schools.

The bottom line, of course, as we know, becomes how do you fund this?

When the governor mentioned in that speech, the state faces approximately a $250 million deficit.

The governor did get to that point about how he plans to fund this.

Let's take a listen.

- Over the next five years, state revenues are expected to grow two-and-a-half percent each year, thanks to our strategic investments and strong economy.

That's good news.

During the same time, state spending is expected to increase at 3.7% per year.

That creates a math problem that must be solved.

As we return to a pre-pandemic fiscal environment, we must take steps to right size government while preserving programs that improve educational outcomes, raise incomes, and make our residents healthier.

- And Ted, the governor says he wants to close that deficit without a broad base tax increase.

And a few days after that speech, we started to get more details about how he plans to do that.

- Yeah, so we've only had the budget documents for a short time, as you and I sit here, Michelle, so I don't wanna claim I have a full mastery of all $14 billion, but I so far don't see a big theme in how the governor's trying to close the deficit.

You know, he and his team, they found a number of new ways they're proposing to raise more revenue.

They wanna put a new tax on digital advertising, they wanna put a new fee on electric vehicles, they want to raise the cigarette tax to $5 a pack.

And then there are other sort of nip and tuck ways to find some money.

They're gonna take money outta the accounts of quasi-public agencies, like the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank.

They're gonna change how, or they want to change how they calculate the car tax reimbursement to the cities and towns.

So we'll see if all these various nip and tuck here and there is what the assembly wants to do in the end.

- Over the next several months, lawmakers will have hearings before they release a final spending plan, sometime in late May or early June.

Let's go back to the State of the State Address.

So as all of this was taking place, it was partly overshadowed by what was a planned protest over homelessness.

You were there at the State House that night.

Walk me through what you heard and what you saw.

- So, Harrison Tuttle, who is the head of the BLM RI PAC, Black Lives Matter Rhode Island PAC, had announced, heading into the speech, he was going to hold what he called a People State of the State Protest event at six o'clock, about an hour before the governor spoke, in the rotunda of the State House.

And though the advocates who were gonna gather wanted to call attention once again to homelessness.

So I was there with my photographer getting ready to do the early newscast for Channel 12.

And as we were staying there, all of a sudden, we saw the governor's staff and police officers roping off the rotunda.

Very unusual, I spent a lot of time at the State House over the years, I'm not sure I've ever seen it roped off.

And I heard other people saying the same thing.

And what the governor's office told the protestors or the people are planning to protest, they said, "We've reserved this, and so you can't use it."

And as you'd imagine, they cried, the protestors cried foul, and they said, you know, "We're being blocked."

The ACLU has spoken out and said that wasn't the right thing to do.

But in the end, it held, they put the protests kind of over in a back corner in the bell area of the State House.

And then once the governor started speaking, those protestors marched around the first floor, chanting.

But it was interesting, because I was told by people in the house chamber, I was outside there where the protest was, that you couldn't really hear it during the governor's speech.

- And as someone watching the State of the State at home, I could not hear those protestors.

- There you go, yeah.

- So, yeah.

I mean, it was interesting too, because this comes at a time when McKee and his administration are facing a lot of criticism over what people are calling a homelessness crisis.

So would you say that night was pivotal in the direction that he's taking to address this?

- I think it certainly told us just how tense this issue has become.

And I think so much of it is focused on those pallet shelters in Providence, that they've been in the headlines for months.

The state can't seem to find a way to get them open.

The governor even felt the need to address that in the speech.

But he also said, "I'm not opening those without, "if I wouldn't compromise safety," clearly alluding to the fire code issues that have been brought up around that.

So I think it's clear that this is gonna continue to be an issue as long as the weather stays cold.

- And of course, those fire code issues are critical and very, you know, top of mind in Rhode Island, given the Station Nightclub fire.

- Yes, and that's what the governor keeps saying, and I think that's why it's so hard to find a resolution.

- [Michelle] Ted, good to see you.

Thank you.

- Good to be here.